“The overall cost-effectiveness of an intervention often matters less than the counterfactual use of its funding” by abrahamrowe
EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)26 Nov 2025

“The overall cost-effectiveness of an intervention often matters less than the counterfactual use of its funding” by abrahamrowe

Cross-posted from Good Structures.

For impact-minded donors, it's natural to focus on doing the most cost-effective thing. Suppose you’re genuinely neutral on what you do, as long as it maximizes the good. If you’re donating money, you want to look for the most cost-effective opportunity (on the margin) and donate to it.

But many organizations and individuals who care about cost-effectiveness try to influence the giving of others. This includes:

  • Research organizations that try to influence the allocation or use of charitable funds.
  • Donor advisors who work with donors to find promising opportunities.
  • People arguing to community members on venues like the EA Forum.
  • Charity recommenders like GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators.

These are endeavors where you’re specifically trying to influence the giving of others. And when you influence the giving of others, you don’t get full credit for their decisions! You should only get credit for how much better the thing you convinced them to do is compared to what they would otherwise do.

This is something that many people in EA and related communities take for granted and find obvious in the abstract. But I think the implications of this aren’t always fully digested by the [...]

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Outline:

(03:34) Impact is largely a function of what the donor would have done otherwise.

(04:36) Is improving the use of effective or ineffective charitable dollars easier?

(06:14) How do people respond to these lower impact interventions?

(08:14) What are the implications of paying a lot more attention to funding counterfactuals?

(10:21) Objections to this argument.

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First published:
November 12th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YrMFHJm7mbswJd7Me/the-overall-cost-effectiveness-of-an-intervention-often

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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